Churchill becomes prime minister

On May 10, 1940, King George VI asked Winston Churchill to form a government, and the sixty-five-year-old became Britain's prime minister. That same morning German armies attacked the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, the start of the invasion of France. Churchill formed a coalition including the Labour and Liberal parties, with Clement Attlee as a key partner, and he made himself Minister of Defence as well.¹³

Neville Chamberlain's government had been weakened by the failure of the Norway campaign in April and early May 1940. In the Commons debate of May 7 and 8, Conservative backbenchers joined the opposition in a sharp attack, and although the government won the vote 281 to 200, its usual majority collapsed. Chamberlain saw he could not lead a national coalition and resigned. Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, was widely considered the likeliest successor, but he declined, partly because as a peer he sat in the House of Lords. Churchill, a long-time critic of appeasement since the Munich Agreement of 1938, took the job.²¹

The first weeks were grim. France fell in June, the British army was evacuated from Dunkirk, and some in the cabinet, including Halifax, argued about exploring a negotiated peace. Churchill refused, and his speeches of that summer, including 'We shall fight on the beaches', helped steady Britain for the Battle of Britain. His insistence on fighting on kept Britain in the war, preserved a base for the later liberation of Europe, and made possible the alliances with the Soviet Union and the United States.³¹